The World of Giants

If the young gods lost to the Giants, would mythology be vastly different? Yes and no, I believe. I think one of the main reasons I’m drawn more to the ancient world than post-Christian Roman mythology is how uncertain life was. While the younger generation of gods of civilization often triumph over the “darker” forces of chaos (i.e. dragons, demons, chthonic gods), the idea of the Giants winning, or rather surviving, their war for dominance is where I started with These Savage Worlds’ fractured cosmogony. Imagine instead of a war for celestial sovereignty, the very universe you lived in started collapsing on itself. No matter how great, how powerful, how wise you are, you can’t stop Entropy’s coming, the promised end.

Now imagine you’re one of the last remnants of your world, now shattered into a hundred different possibilities, reduced, debased, and denied all of its glory. You survived Entropy’s due, but now you’re but stone, a titan amongst tiny shadows of your people, enemies and kin alike, imitations of what they once were.

And you’ve lost your mind, all your memories of your old life — hates and hopes, grudges and regrets — burned away forever.

You are free in your victory, yet damned to never know eternity.

Welcome to the worlds you helped birth, conquerors of nothing.

Welcome to the new age. There’s no exit.

Everything Changed, Yet Nothing Did:

On the surface, there are a few factions, or pantheons, within These Savage Worlds that cast a long shadow, even after they die or lose their time in the sun. For The Tyrannous Stars, the Cragnam, or Temple Kings, as they became known in their respective backstories, are a very mysterious, very powerful, and very outnumbered race of less than a thousand giants. Unlike most depictions of giants, I elected to go with their basis on the Gaelic Formorians, the rivals and often progenitors of several Tuatha De Danan gods and demigods, based on a previously scrapped historical take on them. And unlike most giants, I wanted to center the story around their achievements and their descendants, and their triumphs and brutalities due to the Mythological Cycle’s focus on the various divines and demons who fought, conquered, and, in turn, lost control of Eire, ancient Ireland, over the course of centuries.

To put it into perspective, the Cragnam are a minority in a setting where the vast majority of younger races and worlds are aligned with a type of power diametrically their pole. The trade off is how much stronger, resilient, and gifted the Cragnam are.

Their magic is different. Their size makes even the tallest divines fear them, and their seemingly observable immortality, regeneration, strength, and savagery ensures few can successfully kill them. But there are severe issues: they can’t regain their original forms, their identities have forever been lost, and unlike their reputation, over the centuries, some of them have slowly, groove by groove, lost their minds, their memories, and their souls to a curse they can’t undo.

And no one, except those from their world, can figure out how to save them. You win and you lose. They’re tyrants and victims. Often, they are divided on what approach to take toward the other worlds, and like any pantheon, they are a blend of nobility and cruelty. However, most other races stereotype them as monstrous overlords who threaten the foundations of their shared magic. They are both respected and feared for what they do.

Even when you are secured in your power, there’s always a primal fear: what if there are others out there? What if we weren’t the only ones to survive?

This is the Destiny of the Accursed:

By the time of The Tyrannous Stars, the Cragnam are a decayed temple. Frictions within their ranks, encroaching pantheons, the emergence of a power vacuum of legendary proportions, it is a time of uncertainty. In the days to come, the Lords and Ladies of the First Dawn will be intricately linked to a cursed people, the Matan, one of the three most powerful Night-aligned divine empires across the twenty or so odd worlds populated with people, good folk and divine and demonic alike.

Their final days are coming. Whether it ends in redemption for their eternal sin or their rocky carcasses decorate their fallen cities, that will be up to their descendants and a few old rocks seeking a final means to atone for a lifetime of mixed morals.

No matter what, those who think they control power are always damned to Entropy. No Dawn is eternal, and no Night is forever.